Paul has taken to bashing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for daring to challenge Washington and has otherwise stood shoulder to shoulder with the Washington insiders the rest of the party is fighting. He has been hampered by a group of Republicans who think he is the second coming of his father and hampered by a separate group of Republicans who realize he is not the second coming of his father.

Paul’s strategic choices have been muddled and have all the hallmarks of a candidate micromanaging a campaign staff that will neither stand up to him, nor guide him, but can apparently bully him into a “dumb ass live stream.” When other candidates went to Iowa, Rand went to Alaska and Wyoming. He has marched to the beat of not just his own drummer, but a drummer no one else can hear…

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), on God only knows whose advice, made an early disastrous error by fighting against the Washington GOP in his 2010 election only to go to DC and try not just to work with them, but to do so at the expense of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Paul became the Republican “outsider” who his Kentucky colleague Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) relied on to throw Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) under the bus. That alienated Paul with tea party voters. His failure to aggressively pick up his father’s platform alienated Paul to more hardcore libertarian Ron Paul voters. And Paul has never been able to find a new base of support, having burned bridges will his past coalition.